The Meeting Place - A New Zealand History Blog

Thanks to everyone who turned out for a packed session at Wanaka's Festival of Colour on Sunday 9 April to hear me in conversation with Jim Bolger and chair Paul Diamond on 'The Great War for New Zealand'. Jim Bolger, Paul Diamond, Vincent O'Malley Mr Bolger again reiterated the need for New Zealanders to learn and embrace the history of their own nation, and provided insight into the 1995 settlement with Waikato-Tainui that happened during his time as prime minister. He has previously spoken in favour of the New Zealand Wars becoming a core history subject and talked about this at the time my book was launched last October. Copies of The Great War for New Zealand sold out following the session, with Paper Plus Wanaka promising to order more stock in for those who had missed out. Meanwhile, late last month a reprint of the book landed in the country, as heavy demand saw supplies of the large initial print run nearly exhausted. Stay tuned for news and noti...

In April I will be travelling to Wanaka to take part in the Festival of Colour , Wanaka's flagship celebration of the arts and literature. On Sunday 9 April, I will be in conversation with former Prime Minister Jim Bolger at the Central Lake Trust Crystal Palace. Mr Bolger has publicly called for the history of the New Zealand Wars to be taught in schools. Further information, including online booking, available here .    A former Prime Minister and a working historian discuss not Gallipoli but the Waikato War, a war which in so many ways has done more to shape this country than either of the World Wars. Unlike the US, we know little and do little to commemorate our own wars of the 1860s, the battles and the atrocities. Yet they were a battle between two competing visions of the nation’s future. Jim Bolger was the architect of the Tainui settlement leading to the Queen signing an apology in 1995 for committing British troops to do battle in the Waik...

Historian Vincent O'Malley discusses his new book The Great War For New Zealand , an account of war in Waikato between 1863 and 1864. In association with Bridget Williams Books and Bruce McKenzie Bookseller for the Festival of Cultures.  Where: Globe Theatre, Cnr Main and Pitt Sts, Palmerston North   When: Sunday 5 March 2017 4:00pm Admission Free https://www.facebook.com/events/270964373338400/  

A George Grey-inspired attack that killed up to 100 Maori men, women and children to crush a non-existent uprising signalled “a great war for New Zealand” was being waged.  Today, the only visible remnant is St Paul’s Anglican Church. Further up the road is an old Catholic cemetery where a mission station once stood. The two churches marked the outer limits of Rangiaowhia, a bustling Maori settlement 5km east of Te Awamutu. In the 1850s, it was one of New Zealand’s most important agricultural hubs. But all that changed with a devastating and controversial raid early in 1864. It is a story few New Zealanders know anything about.   Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 7-C2     Throughout the 1850s, the Waikato tribes were among the most prosperous, not only feeding the settlers of Auckland but also contributing a significant chunk of the country’s export earnings through wheat sold to the gold miners of Victoria and Califo...

'Settler Colonial History, Commemoration and White Backlash: Remembering the New Zealand Wars' , co-authored with Dr Joanna Kidman, has recently been published in its online version by the journal Settler Colonial Studies . When students from a North Island secondary school began a petition to Parliament in 2014 seeking a national day of commemoration for the victims of the New Zealand Wars fought in the nineteenth century, they sparked a national debate about how, why and whether New Zealanders should remember the wars fought on their own shores. Although the petition attracted significant support, it also drew its share of criticism. This paper considers the subsequent debate through the lens of public submissions to Parliament on the petition. A particular focus is on the nearly three-quarters of submissions that opposed the petition. These are examined within the context of wider Pākehā (non-Māori) unease at the unravelling of settler colonial forms of national identity ...

Following publication of The Great War for New Zealand I continue to write and publish on the Waikato War, including this article published in the latest Journal of the Polynesian Society that takes a more biographical approach, comparing Rewi Maniapoto of Ngāti Maniapoto and Wiremu Tamihana of Ngāti Hauā. Both were great rangatira in their own right but their reputations have contrasted significantly over time and my article critiques the still surprisingly prevalent notion of 'good' Wiremu Tamihana versus 'bad' Rewi Maniapoto (see the abstract of the article below). I was also delighted to have contributed the cover image for the journal, a photograph I took of the Tohu Maumahara at Rangiriri early in 2015. As discussed in my book, the monument was unveiled on the 149th anniversary of the Rangiriri battle in November 2012. Abstract: The depiction of Ngāti Maniapoto generally and Rewi Maniapoto in particular as extremists with an almost fanatical determin...

The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800-2000 by Vincent O'Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $80) Reviewed by Jim Eagles It is a sad commentary on New Zealand's interest in its own history that the most recent previous book-length account of the conflict in the Waikato, which had such a huge impact on the development of this country, was written in 1879 by John Featon, an artillery volunteer in the war who later became a journalist. However, Vincent O'Malley's epic volume almost justifies the wait. This is a great book in every way. It is massive in size; its 688 pages printed on high-quality paper weighing in at a mighty 2.5kg (so heavy it is awkward to read in bed). The only real flaw in the production is that the index is not up to the standard required of such an important work. It is impressive in its scope, embracing not only the actual fighting in 1863-64, but also the much more important causes and consequences. [Read more at...